Landed Falcon 9 booster sails into Los Angeles

For the first time on the West Coast, a recovered Falcon 9 first stage has made it back to port, intact. Following its role with the successful launch of ten Iridium NEXT satellites, the booster completed a bullseye return on to the deck of SpaceX’s drone ship, before arriving in the Port of Los Angeles early on Tuesday morning.Falcon 9 Return:

The primary mission always concentrates on the successful deployment of the payload into the required orbit.

This opening salvo for Iridium NEXT delivered the birds to a 625 kilometer temporary parking orbit where they will be tested and exercised by Iridium over the coming weeks. The latest report notes all ten satellites are performing without issue.

Upon meeting testing and validation requirements, the satellites will then be moved into their 780 km operational orbit and begin providing service to Iridium’s customers.

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“Iridium launched a new era in the history of our company and a new era in space as we start to deliver the next-generation of satellite communications,” noted Matt Desch, chief executive officer of Iridium – who had shown great patience and support for SpaceX as they worked through the steps to return to flight.

“We have been working endless hours for the last eight years to get to this day, and to finally be here with ten Iridium NEXT satellites successfully launched into low-Earth orbit is a fulfilling moment. We are incredibly thankful for all of the hard work from our team, as well as our partners, to help us achieve this milestone.”

While this mission was still proceeding, the first stage began its return home.

It will first need to undergo a few days of work at the Port of Los Angeles, likely mirroring previous work that has been conducted at Port Canaveral.

That process was refined as more boosters returned to the Cape, with dockside processing conducted in a shorter period of time, since engineers worked on the roadmap that was built for the processing of the CRS-8 first stage – the first booster to be recovered at sea.

Those procedures – worked for the Iridium NEXT stage – will include the crane driven translation on to its processing mount, which will allow for additional safing and the removal of the four landing legs.

A placeholder was refined to show a January 26th launch target – around midnight local time.

It is expected this date will slip to the right, via natural realignment as the flow moves closer to launch. However, it has remained set for over a week, and has since been classed as “Range Approved”. The next update is expected in the next few days.

EDIT: That update was forthcoming, with the latest NET (No Earlier Than) target showing as January 30.

SpaceX is yet to confirm which mission this booster will be associated with, not least with NASA still debating when the CRS-10 mission will launch with the next Dragon mission to the International Space Station (ISS).